u must know that now--now it is imperative!"

Shameful beseeching--shameful that she should have to beseech. Where was
his manhood, his chivalry--where his compassion?

"Imperative _nuts_! You don't mean to say you're trying to make me marry
you because we got lost in the woods?"

Desperately the girl struggled for dignity.

"It is the least you could do, Signor. Even if--if you had not
cared----"

Her voice broke again.

"You little nut." Johnny's tones had altered. More mildly he went on, "I
don't quite get you, Ri-Ri, and I don't think you get me. It isn't up to
me to do any marrying, if that's honestly what's worrying you. And I'm
not going to be stampeded, if that's what you're trying to do. . . . Our
reputations will have to stand it."

And this, Maria Angelina despairingly recalled, was the man who had
kissed her, had watched the moon rise with his arm about her, promising
her his protection. . . . Wildly she wished that she had died before she
had come to this--a thing lightly regarded and repudiated.

It was horrible to plead to him but the panic of her plight drove her
on.

"Reputations!" she said chokingly. "Yours can stand it, perhaps--but
what of me? You cannot be serious, you cannot! Why, it is my name, my
life, my everything! . . . You made me come this way. Always I wanted
you to go another way, but no, you were sure, you told me to trust to
you. And then you pretended to care for me--do you think I would have
tolerated your arm about me for one instant if I had not believed it was
forever? Oh, if my father were here you would talk differently! Have you
no honor? None? . . . Every one knew there was an--an affair of the
heart growing between us, and then for us two to disappear--this night
alone----"

Her voice kept breaking off. She could not control it or the tears that
ran down her face in the darkness. She was a choking, crying wild thing.

Desperately she forced one last insistence, "Oh, you must, you must!"

"Must nothing," Byrd answered her savagely. "What kind of scheme is
this, anyhow? I've had a few things tried before but this beats the
Dutch. I don't know how much of this talk you mean but I'll tell you
right now, young lady, nobody can tie me up for life with any such
stuff. Father! Honor! Scandal! Believe me, little one, you've got the
wrong number."

"You mean--you dare refuse?"

"You bet I dare refuse. There's no sense to all this. Nobody's going to
think the worse of yo